Basic Concepts in Core HRMS in Oracle applications - Part3

Oracle Payroll – Salient features

       Process many payrolls quickly and easily in a single day

       Define comprehensive personal payment methods

       Quickly create complex calculation rules without programming

       Efficiently check, double check and reconcile payrolls

       Examine employee payment histories at any time

       Track and monitor employee costs via online access to payroll data

       Transfer payroll information to the general ledger and to other accounting systems, including project costing systems

       Report on payroll results to the tax office and company executives

       Maintain full security and integrity of payroll information, including historical information

       Enable access to information when required for inquiries and responses to pay queries

Payroll

Navigation: Payroll à Description

For faster pay processing, a group of employees are sorted using Payroll, whose pay processing can be done with a single frequency. The payroll frequency could be monthly, semi-monthly, weekly, daily etc. An employee is put on a payroll by assigning the payroll to the employee assignment. Payroll data is date tracked. To assign a payroll to an employee assignment, the payroll needs to be effective as of the effective date of the assignment.

Tables

       PAY_ALL_PAYROLLS_F – PAYROLL_ID is linked with PER_ALL_ASSIGNMENTS_F.PAYROLL_ID

Note: The data stored in above details is for a business group. In case of a Global implementation, data for all the business groups will be stored in these tables.

The field business_group_id stores the id of the business group.

Payment Methods

Navigation: Payroll à Payment Methods

Payment method is the way by which the employee would prefer to receive the pay. Payment method could be check, cash or NACHA.

Tables

       PAY_PERSONAL_PAYMENT_METHODS_F – ASSIGNMENT_ID is linked with PER_ALL_ASSIGNMENTS_F.ASSIGNMENT_ID

       PAY_ORG_PAYMENT_METHODS_F – PAYMENT_TYPE_ID is linked with PAY_PAYMENT_TYPES.PAYMENT_TYPE_ID

Note: The data stored in above details is for a business group. In case of a Global implementation, data for all the business groups will be stored in these tables.

The field business_group_id stores the id of the business group.

Consolidation Set

Navigation: Payroll à Consolidation

A consolidation set must be selected before starting a payroll run. The consolidation set provides essential labeling for each payroll run.

Benefits and Compensation

Compensation and benefits for the employees are the integral part for any enterprise. The compensations and benefits can be setup in Oracle HRMS. All types of compensation and benefits and the rules that determine who will be paid what benefits, when and how often could be set up.

With the date track option available, future dated changes can be done to take care of policy changes. Compensation heads such as earnings, deductions and other items set ups is discussed here. Please, refer the Appendix – A for benefits set ups.

These heads are set up using elements.

Element

Navigation: Total Compensation à Basic à Element Description

This data is date tracked. The effective date for an element could be selected such that any historical entries could be made. Reporting name of the element is the name that appears on the reports. Primary classification states the purpose of the element. E.g. earnings, information, Employer liabilities, voluntary deductions etc.

Type of the element could be recurring (occurring periodically) or nonrecurring (occurring just once). Termination rule would be the rule when the element entries need to be stopped for an employee. Generally, Actual Termination is selected. Multiple Entries Allowed should be checked to receive more than one entry.

INPUT AND Output currencies will be based on the legislation. Additional information is stored in the Further Information field.

Input Value

Navigation: Total Compensation à Basic à Element Description à Input Values

Up to 12 input values can be defined for an element. This data is date tracked. The name should be entered and the units. Units could be Hours, Money etc. To hold the payroll run results, the input value needs to be defined as Pay Value. The element input value could be required or optional. Default, minimum and maximum values could be entered. Minimum and Maximum value will help in validation.

Element Link

Navigation: Total Compensation > Basic > Link

Element links are used to determine which group of people is eligible for which elements.

The element, for which the link has to be created, needs to be selected in the window. In the eligibility criteria, the element can be linked to an organization, Job, Grade, People Group, Location, Position, Payroll, Employment Category and Salary Basis. The check box ‘Link To All Payrolls’ will link the element to all the employees.

Tables

       PAY_ELEMENT_TYPES_F

       PAY_ELEMENT_ENTIRES_F

       PAY_INPUT_VALUES_F

       PAY_ELEMENT_LINKS_F

Date Tracking

Functional aspects of date tracking have been explained before.

Date tracking enables to restore history after any changes have been done. Not all data in HRMS is date tracked. Technically, the tables ending with a ‘_f’ store the date tracked information. The primary key for such table comprises of an id field (e.g. person_id in per_all_people_f), effective_start_date and effective_end_date.

A condition needs to be put in every query to check for the effective start date and effective end date in order to fetch a single record.

Different Date track modes while updating the data are as follows:

Consider a small example. An assignment has start date 1-Jan-2001 and no effective end date (End of time 31-Dec-4712). The record is being viewed on 1-Jan-2005 from the application.

Some changes are done to this assignment and these need to be saved. The system gives two options, Correction and Update

Correct

If Correction is selected, the current record with effective start date 1-Jan-2001 is updated with the new changes. i.e. there remains just one record after Correction is done.

Update

If Update is selected, a new record is created from 1-Jan-2005 till 31-Dec-4712 with the latest changes that are done. The existing record is end dated on 31-Dec-2004 and has the previous details. Thus, a history record is created that has the historical data.

If a record is updated on the same day when it was created and Update mode is selected, the mode is automatically changes to Correction.

Future Dated Changes

Consider the above assignment.

There are two records:

Start Date à End Date

1-Jan-2001 à 31-Dec-2004

1-Jan-2005 à 31-Dec-4712

Effective date is set to 1-Jan-2004, displaying the first assignment record. Some changes are done and saved. Now, as of 1-Jan-2004, future dated change exists, which will become effective from 1-Jan-2005.

In such cases the system prompts for two options when the changes are saved:

Insert and Replace.

Insert

This will insert a new record before the next scheduled change. The change in future will be effective as of the start date of the change.

i.e. the new assignment records will be:

Start Date à End Date

1-Jan-2001 à 31-Dec-2003

1-Jan-2004 à 31-Dec-2004

1-Jan-2005 à 31-Dec-4712

Replace

This option will replace the next future change with the current change. The future change will not exist anymore.

i.e. the new assignment records will be:

Start Date à End Date

1-Jan-2001 à 31-Dec-2003

1-Jan-2004 à 31-Dec-4712

Date Track Delete

When any date tracked data needs to be deleted, following options are available:

End Date

The record will be end dated and will not be visible on the screen after the end date.

Purge

The record will be totally removed from the database

In case of future dated records existing, following options are available:

All

All future updates are removed.

Next

Next applicable change is deleted. End date of the current record is set to the end date of the next change.